To Tame the Debt and Inflation, We Need to Increase Taxes

The problem is Congress. If we increase taxes, will Congress use the money on the debt? (Arguably that would also fight inflation.) Or would they just spend the money on more programs? That won't do anything about the debt, and it also won't do anything about inflation (because the same amount of money is being spent, the only thing that changed is who has it to spend).

Well, knowing Congress, which do you think they're going to do?

I suppose that kind of cynicism means that Congress can never do anything to help with the debt, or to help with inflation. But, frankly, I don't trust them to do the right thing with a big new pot of money.

If we're going to have trickle-up economics, where money inevitably ends up in the hands of the richest among us because large amounts of capital in one place seem to exert an almost gravitational pull, then I think it makes sense to use the government and its powers of taxation as a countervailing force by taking money from the rich and either pulling it out of circulation permanently or redistributing it to the working class, who will in turn spend it on goods and services so that this money eventually finds its way back to the rich.

> This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They [Republicans] didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue. -- WILL ROGERS, 27 November 1932